Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) cultivar classification: an artificial neural network approach

Abstract

The present study investigated the possible use of artificial neural networks (ANN) to classify five chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) varieties. For chestnut classification, back-propagation neural networks were framed on the basis of physical and mechanical parameters. Seven physical and mechanical characteristics (geometric mean diameter, sphericity, volume of nut, surface area, shell thickness, shearing force and strength) of chestnut were determined. It was found that these characteristics were statistically different and could be used in the classification of species. In the developed ANN model, the design of the network is 7-(5-6)-1 and it consists of 7 input, 2 hidden and 1 output layers. Tansig transfer functions were used in both hidden layers, while linear transfer functions were used in the output layer. In ANN model, R-2 value was obtained as 0.99999 and RMSE value was obtained as 0.000083 for training. For testing, R-2 value was found as 0.99999 and RMSE value was found as 0.00031. In the approximation of values obtained with ANN model to the values measured, average error was found as 0.011%. It was found that the results found with ANN model were very compatible with the measured data. It was found that the ANN model obtained can classify chestnut varieties in a fast and reliable way.